"This year, in a gesture of humanitarian relief, the (Lake Superior State University Banished Words) committee restores "truthiness," banned on last year's list, to formal use. This comes after comedians and late-night hosts were thrown under the bus and rendered speechless by a nationwide professional writers' strike. The silence is deafening."Of course, "
(thrown) under the bus"* is on this year's Banished List, along with "
perfect storm", "
webinar"*, "
waterboarding", "
post-9/11", "
wordsmith", "
back in the day", "
surge", "
x is the new y", "
give back" and other seemingly "
random" words and phrases.
*One of the requirements for a Banished Word or Phrase is that it has been used as a title for a Blogspot or Typepad blog. [more inside]
posted by wendell
on Jan 1, 2008 -
102 comments
Truthiness Makes the Trifecta! As I predicted, the
Classic Colbertism that won two Word of the Year awards has made it onto the
32nd L.S.S.U. List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness.
Other linguistic losers for 2007:
"Awesome",
"Gitmo",
"chipotle",
"undocumented alien*",
"pwn",
"search**" (effectively replaced by Google),
"gone missing",
"gone bad" (applied to things already bad, i.e. 'drug deal gone bad'),
"ask your doctor***",
"now playing in
theaters" (Dept. of Redundancy Dept.) and
"healthy food" (
healthful is healthier), as well as shorthand couple names like
"TomKat" (Would Bogart and Bacall have been
"BogCall"?),
"i-anything" (lucky for Apple they didn't get that 'iPhone' trademark), men saying "
we're pregnant" and
"boasts", as in 'boasts
amenities'. (
Previously)
posted by wendell
on Dec 31, 2006 -
65 comments
New Year's Tradition: Banishing Words (yes, I've done this before) L.S.S.U has been making lists since 1976, but after all the censorship battles of the last year, they probably should be using less threatening terminology than "banished". Still, most of the terminology in this Hall of Shame list certainly deserves to be discouraged, derided and degraded.
Of course, Creative Deity Matt Groening does his own annual list of
Forbidden Words, and some webhead has developed a cool webtool:
The Forbidden Words Flagger.
posted by wendell
on Dec 31, 2004 -
31 comments
If you don't like dictionary posts, look away, NOW!
But if you like to play with words, the dictionarians at
Merriam-Webster have announced the winners in their poll for the
Ten Favorite Words for 2004:
defenestration,
serendipity,
onomatopoeia,
discombobulate,
plethora,
callipygian,
juxtapose,
persnickety,
kerfuffle and
flibbertigibbet
Also, a list of runners-up with more of my personal faves: oxymoron, copacetic, curmudgeon, conundrum,
euphemism, superfluous, and of course, Smock! Smock! Smock!
[more inside]
Via vidiot.
posted by wendell
on Jun 12, 2004 -
41 comments
The Word(s) Is Out. One of my favorite things about New Year's Eve/Day is the annual announcement of the Hall of Shame of Linguistic Incorrectness: The
Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words. Metrosexual... bling-bling... embedded journalist... shock and awe... not much to argue with here. Uh, oh, they've banished
Smoking Gun. And "LOL"? WTF?
(The latest list hasn't hit the U's own website yet, but here's their complete listing of
the previously banished, going back to 1976.)
posted by wendell
on Dec 31, 2003 -
10 comments
